History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t1.27

v4.c63.t1.27

General feeling went so much against allowing a special share to the eldest or allowing the father to make an unequal division among his sons, that such action was condemned in the same breath with *niyoga*,¹¹⁹⁶ or the sacrifice of the cow called Anubandhyā. It is very instructive to follow the agruments of the Mit. and other writers on this point. The oldest extant commentator, Medhātithi, on Manu IX. 112 shows that even before his time there were writers that held that the texts of Manu on *niyoga* and on the special share to the eldest at a partition were in vogue only in bygone days and not in their days, that the rules of the smṛtis were conditioned by time and country, just as *sattras* of long duration, though declared in the Vedic texts committed to memory by Vedic students, were not being performed and just as Manu (I. 85) declares that the dharmas were different in different *yugas*. But Medhātithi¹¹⁹⁷ does not accept this reasoning, denies that different dharmas are prescribed for different *yugas* and holds that there is no restriction as to the dharmas to be performed in a country. Though sattras may not be performed now still it is possible to perform them. The argument of the Mit. on Yāj.